Saturday the 14th (1981) User Reviews

"If you weren't immortal, you'd kill yourself!"

[Hey_Sweden · 6/10 · 4 March 2017]

Real life couple Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss star in this crude and goofy horror parody from New World and producer Julie Corman (Roger C.s' wife). They play John and Mary, who inherit some property that turns out to be cursed. When their inquisitive son Billy (Kevin Brando) happens to open an all important book, he unleashes unspeakable evil on the house - and potentially the world. A non stop assortment of truly ridiculous monsters show up to terrorize John, Mary, Billy, and teen aged daughter Debbie (Kari Michaelsen).

Also along for the ride is top character actor Severn Darden, as an exterminator with the appropriate name of Van Helsing. Jeffrey Tambor, in his second feature film appearance, co- stars as a vampire named Waldemar. As always, these two guys prove to be very valuable. The movie really does hit its stride once Darden shows up. He has most of the best lines.

This is going to come off as much too tame and lame for some tastes, but clearly screenwriter / director Howard R. Cohen was going for a family audience. Some characters do die, but mostly off screen, and there isn't much gore to speak of - aside from a fairly nasty severed head. The creature costumes are hysterically dumb looking, and among those horror classics spoofed are "Creature from the Black Lagoon", "Jaws", and "The Birds". The finale is absolutely cartoonish, with sound effects accompanying all the face making that our adversaries are doing.

Benjamin and the oh so sexy Prentiss are a hoot as the parents, and are ably supported by Tambor, Darden, and others like Rosemary DeCamp, Stacy Keach Sr., and 70s exploitation starlet Roberta Collins.

It might be silly and infantile, but that's not always necessarily a bad thing, and this could appeal to any horror fan who saw it as a kid, or the young at heart.

Six out of 10.

A great Horror movie-with a comic twist.

[Baldach · 6/10 · 6 October 1999]

According the movie, "If Friday the 13th is unlucky, Saturday the 14th is the worse". A family movies into a strange house that is inhabiated by many strange, undead monsters. The comedy of this movie is taking a horror scence and putting gags in it. Such as the mad scientist tasting his potion and saying "Not bad, but not good", or a mother finding a six-finger rubber glove. A good movie for the Halloween season.

Goofy, cosy and charming horror comedy

[Northtribe3 · 6/10 · 14 July 2018]

I decided to watch this movie late at night maybe around midnight at Saturday the 14th (hehe yeah I know very clever) so I was quite tired and maybe should'nt have checked it out at this late hour but I found this movie to be very charming and cosy.

The film is about a family moving into a house which looks like a big dump but unbeknown to them this house has a curse of some sort. The son in the family starts to read and look into a book and as fast as he do this the creatures in the book comes to life! Meanwhile the parents find a note in the kitchen left there by the prievous owner telling them not to open the book but they brush it of thinking it's a different kind of book, (im gonna leave it at that plotwise because I do not want to spoil the whole movie for you).

Something which I really enjoyed about this movie was the numerous references to other horror movies such as Creature from the black lagoon, Jaws, Dracula and perhaps Evil Dead ( I say perhaps because Im not sure if Evil Dead came out before or after this movie). The humour in it was not the funniest ever or so but I would rather call it charming just like all the references and I think this movie makes a great job of that, much better than the movie called Student Bodies (1981) which had way to many jokes in it which just made it annoying after a while.

The acting is ok and I say ok because some of them were good and some of them were annoying or terrible. I Think this movie is more aimed towards a younger audience which maybe explains why this movie was rated PG.

If you wanna have a funny and entertaining movie to Watch on your own late at night I can really recommend Saturday the 14th just don't have your expectations that high.

6/10 stars from me

I love this movie - for it's nastalgia of course!

[ancienttowers · 5 November 2003]

I was at my dad and step moms house, one day at like 7 or 8 years old. As usual I was flipping through there endless amount of video tapes. Well I came across Saturday the 14th...I love horrors, so I poped it in...thinking it would be a scary movie. Wrong...of course like the title suggests...it's going to be a comedy, and was. Well needless to say, everytime I would spend the night at dads house, it seems like I watched this movie. The charectors are kooky the monsters are silly and the family of the main charectors is hilarious to watch them bumble around the house dying off. Jeffery Tamboure (sp) is great in it...I liked his dark sarcastic attitude. And his wife is hilarious. BUT, on the other hand, in the 80's this movie would of been the bomb to a 7 year old. Today though, I seriously doubt it...with children spoiled of special effects. Thus I say, I love this movie for it's nastalgiac qualities...it brings back those priceless child hood 80's days that are long gone! Go rent it, see for yourself how wakcy this movie really is. Don't expect some horror, or block buster. It's only fun and slightly scary.

A comedy of errors

[pughspencer · 3/10 · 27 July 2022]

While I could write a laundry list of all the schlocky horror B movies I love, the only list I have for this movie is one of the worst horror comedies ive ever seen. It feels as if it was confused if it should be for kids or adults. On one hand there's childish gags & antics but on the other theres decapitated heads and panty dropping shots. Practically all the characters were annoying and unfunny. I think I maybe chuckled twice. The monster costumes & effects although I've seen worse are pretty cheap. And the film's brain-dead plot got pretty irritating I think I bruised my forehead after all the face-palming I did. I can enjoy dumb mindless trashy films but this one just wasn't my right kind of stupid. If you like it and have Nostalgia for it that's cool but for me it was one of the longest 75 minutes I had to sit through.

This movie is bad, but at least it's short

[cricketbat · 3/10 · 16 October 2021]

I remember liking Saturday the 14th when I was a kid. I must not have been a very bright kid. This movie is not good. It felt like I was watching a rough cut of a film that hadn't been finished yet. The story is confusing, the acting is wooden, the comedy is uninspired, and while there are some fun visual effects, others look really hokey. This movie is a waste of time, but at least it's short.

Laughless

[pmtelefon · 2/10 · 14 October 2023]

I've been trying to sit through "Saturday the 14th" from start to finish for many years. I've started and stopped it a bunch of times. Since today is actually Saturday the 14th and its been raining all day, I decided to watch the whole thing. I made it to the end and I also wasted my afternoon. "Saturday the 14th" is the pits. It's a completely laughless affair. The cast is fine, especially a dreamy Kari Michaelsen, but they are given some really bad material to deal with. I'm glad I finally finished this movie. I won't ever bother watching it again. (IMDB has a six hundred character minimum. So...)

It's what real estate agents call a fixer upper.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 6 September 2022]

For me, the best joke was the fact that this vampire spoof is set in my hometown of Erie PA, scary enough without vampires, and with its place in history probably having many ghosts too. I have seen all the "Dracula" satires, from "Old Dracula" (coming out in 1974, the same year as "Young Frankenstein"), "Love at First Bite" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It". I've seen abandoned houses (and huge factories) years after leaving upon visits, so choosing it for that reason as well as its name was a good idea. In 1981 when this was made, the country was impacted by a recession, so there were many Erie's all over the United States.

This film would have been funny on a TV variety show as a series of sketches (or as part of a "Creepshow" movie), but they couldn't even get the movie to reach 90 minutes. The premise is that a vampire, TV's Jeffrey Tambor, wants a long abandoned house to find a mysterious book, but it's been spoken for by Richard Benjamin. Wife Mary Kay Place is not pleased, and the kids either have nightmares or can't sleep. Dishes somehow wash themselves and rooms automatically clean (a homemaker's dream, so why complain?), and the monster from the boy's nightmare turns up in a bubble bath.

Obviously made for those with the mentality of 13 year old boys, this takes silliness to a ridiculous level, and very cheaply. A cast of veteran character actors obviously needed to do something to qualify for union insurance so they took anything they could get. Rosemary DeCamp, Severn Darden, Stacy Keach Sr. And Roberta Collins do their bits and run to the bank. Apparently so did 13 year olds to the theater to see this. But the critics pretty much said what I do. Comedy requires a consistently funny plot and jokes, and this only has a limited bit of both.

Puerile horror comedy

[gridoon2024 · 4/10 · 11 June 2019]

Unfunny and boring horror comedy. A few good makeup effects (the severed head looks very real!) and the hot daughter (the actress was 20 at the time, so I can say it!) cannot save it. It's a total time-waster. *1/2 out of 4.

Silly but silly in a good way.

[mm-39 · 7/10 · 20 October 2018]

Saw this film on a family trip while watching H B O in the hotel room. So many funny one liners which my family kept repeating years latter. NO NO NO ooo no thank you. Liquor store.... No private residence. Funny one liners if you watched Saturday the 14th. The characters are funny. The liquor store deliver boy. The annoying relatives. The most annoying relative gets eaten by the fur coat. The vampire "I would kill me self if I where not immortal!" The crazy vampire hunter with socially does not get it. The obsession for can openers. The Twilight zone theme music and narration play at the right moments on the T V. Lot's of one liners, joke, gimmicks, and the same sticks which really works. Well timed, greatly, executed, film which is more like stand up comedy. 7 out of 10 stars.

Crickets chirping

[PIST-OFF · 2/10 · 26 August 2020]

I remember seeing this as a kid. I remember thinking that while it was no Airplane it was funny. I recently re-watched it. Not only did I not laugh at most of the jokes, some of them were just painfully unfunny. Seems like better choices in actor and writers could have made this a lot funnier. I suppose to be generous it was only partially spoofing a genre which had only existed for less than half a decade. This seems more like it riffs on the older Universal horror movies.... problem is Mel Brooks had cornered that market with Young Frankenstein. There's a reason this movie is forgotten.

You have to understand

[waltjrimmer · 10/10 · 15 March 2012]

This movie was made as a spoof at a time when it was at about the same quality as what it was spoofing. On other review on this page says that the jokes and costumes are outdated and cheap. Well, maybe if you watch the current horror films. Personally, I prefer the old horror movies, from the black and white to the corny 70's gorror films. This film really does work, but you have to have a certain taste in film and comedy, so it isn't for everyone.

If you like Evil Dead, the original Friday the 13th, The Birds or those old, grainy horror films, I suggest that you at least watch it and see if you like it. You won't lose anything and you'll probably get a few laughs out of it. The worst thing about this movie, the one thing that drives me up the wall about it, is that it's usually very hard to find. It's not incredibly popular and it's rather old. Sometimes you can find it from a video retailer or one of those subscription/mail-in DVD dealers, but you're really basing it a bit on luck. As an overall, something to seriously check out, if you can find it. I hope you enjoy it.

Cheesy Goodness

[daemonsdiablo · 7/10 · 22 January 2009]

Very good movie, if you enjoy low-budget, early 1980's films. It is cheesy, the acting is SUPPOSED to be bad, as are the effects. The movie is intended as a family film, so its pretty mild, however if you've watched a lot of old horror films, especially low budget ones, you should love this. It is a good indication of at least some of the inspiration for newer movies such as the "Scary Movie" series. If you watch it, please keep in mind, it was made in 1981, even the movies that were well-funded and serious at that time appear campy to us now, so keep an open mind and a sense of humor and don't take the movie, or yourself, too seriously.

Very bad.

[gridoon · 4/10 · 21 January 2000]

A poor movie - to put it mildly. The misleading title may make you think that this is going to be a parody of the "Friday the 13Th" formula, but it isn't. In fact, it's hard to know what type of movie they're supposed to be spoofing here. Anyway, this film is an appallingly unfunny comedy AND an unscary horror flick, so there's no reason for you to see it. It has one blessing, however, that saved it from the 1/10 rating (I gave it a 2): it's very, very short - but still not short enough to camouflage its lack of inspiration.

Old 80s Cheese.

[insomniax2 · 4 January 2007]

This movie formed part of my childhood.

Sitting down in my bedroom, 8, 9, 10 years old and sneaking on a black comedy every now and again. I had been looking for this film for years (not too actively I'll admit) and when it finally came on at 4 in the morning, I was all set to go.

My only advice after watching it is, if this film held a special place in your heart when you were a kid like me, is leave it there. It does not stand up to the test of time.

Old black comedies like Transylvania 65000/Ghoulies/Critters etc have stood the test of time to a certain extent, but this just hasn't.

Unfunny horror spoof

[anxietyresister · 2/10 · 27 April 2006]

A family have just moved into a spooky new house. The boy discovers a weird book which, when opened, make the monster illustrations inside come to life. Meanwhile, as all hell breaks loose, a vampire and his partner are after it as well..

Yes, I know everything is supposed to be intentionally bad in this extremely derivative film, but when you've seen as many cheap horror films as I have you begin to lose track of what is meant to be comedy and what should be seen as scary. To me, the fact that every scene starts with a nod and a wink and is so obvious in its set-up that it is not to be taken seriously makes it lose whatever humour it might have possessed in the first place. You can imagine the director and the cast slapping each other on the back because they think they're a bunch of really clever guys. In actual fact, the self conscious mocking of convention doesn't make Saturday The 14th any better, it just lowers it to the level of those crappy horror flicks it seeks to satire. Besides, this kind of material was handled a lot better in the likes of the Scary Movie series. So why do we need to watch it here? Answer: we don't. 2/10

They managed fit "horrible" into "Horror"

[jahremusic · 1/10 · 18 September 2013]

The thing is... it's bad, and it knows it's bad. However, it's self awareness doesn't actually excuse it from being bad.

This is Mr. Magoo in a haunted house for 90 minutes. The jokes are cheap, easy, lazy, and lame. The characters have little to no human reaction to anything, which means they're not relatable and the joke is not there. Jokes have an undertone of either anger or sadism to them, so when the butt of the joke is unaffected, the joke is not executed. Being oblivious to everything is just one bad joke. And this is the joke they tell throughout the entire movie.

So basically, the fact that the movie knows that it's bad and not trying very hard is actually kind of an insult. The only joke is the sucker who bought a ticket to see this.

Is this supposed to be funny? Or scary? ...Or anything at all?

[Coventry · 1/10 · 31 October 2005]

Oh yeah...we have a winner! This has got to be most retarded movie I've ever seen! I don't care whether it was meant to be accessible for younger viewers or not, this "spoof" stands for everything that gives the horror genre a bad name! Amateurish and terribly lame rubbish that doesn't even seem to know what it's poking fun at. Judging by the title, you'd think that the screenplay mercilessly attacks the box-office hit "Friday the 13th" and all its brainless clones, but it's not even mentioning a masked killer. Instead, we have a family of unintelligent souls inheriting a house stuffed with monsters. When Junior opens a book he shouldn't have, the countdown for the end of the world has begun. The only kind of "special effects" are a bunch of idiots who volunteered to dress up like silly monsters in cheap-looking costumes. I counted one remotely funny gag ("damn owls...") and all the other jokes and witty lines were embarrassingly dire. I truly hope that cast and crew were really proud to be a part of this turkey. Avoid at all costs.

A disappointing movie...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 19 March 2019]

Well, oddly enough it is not before 2019 that I actually got to watch "Saturday the 14th", even though I think even my brother had this movie on VHS back in the day.

So was it worth waiting 38 years for? No. Definitely no.

Sure, it was fun to watch a young Paula Prentiss and Jeffrey Tambor in the movie. But seen from an entertainment perspective, then there was surprisingly little of any interest or worthwhile entertainment to be had throughout the course of the movie. And I must admit that my attention was starting to falter a couple of times throughout the movie.

For a movie of this, that sort of is a spoof, but not rightfully so, then there was surprisingly little laughs to be found throughout the entire movie. I think I laughed maybe twice somewhere along the line.

This was definitely not a particularly memorable movie, and it was so painstakingly obvious that all costumes were exactly that - costumes! They were horribly fake and they hadn't even bothered to adhere the costumes around the eyes, making it even more clear that it was just people wearing elaborate Halloween costumes.

Not really worth the time or effort, because I had expected more in terms of fun and laughs, but I was sorely disappointed.

Incredibly cheesy

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 20 June 2018]

SATURDAY THE 14TH is an incredibly cheesy horror spoof made back in 1981. The scattershot approach sees a couple inhabiting an old spooky house which seems to be the meeting point for various monsters, generally played by guys in rubber suits. Morose vampire Jeffrey Tambor hangs around a lot while Richard Benjamin plays it straight as the hero and comes across as a real dweeb. The film spoofs various recent genre hits including Friday the 13th, Poltergeist and The Evil Dead, but the gags are really overdone and very silly for the most part; this is definitely a kid's film made at the level of kids from beginning to end. I found it rather silly and also rather irritating.

Friday the 13th is bad, Saturday the 14th is worse

[advnarayan · 7/10 · 15 September 2013]

This movie was telecast on TV in my part of the world (India) in the early Nineties when the cable TV boom hit India. It was released as Friday THE 13th IS BAD, Saturday THE 14th IS WORSE. With a catchy title like that how can we miss this scary movie. At that time I had heard about the Friday the 13th horror series- but had not seen that movie. My brother and I waited with baited breath for this movie which we expected to be much, much, much more terrifying than Friday the 13th. but what we saw was a mild movie; a movie which just about gets a D- grade among horror movies. At that time id dint know that this was a spoof, or that its one not to be taken seriously. now thinking back- did i enjoy that movie- yup- and its another golden oldie which i treasure of my childhood.

"It gets bad on Friday the 13th but it gets worse on Saturday the 14th"

[tavm · 2/10 · 14 September 2013]

Okay, so on the 12th day of this month which was a Thursday, I watched Pandemonium which was originally supposed to be called Thursday the 12th. Yesterday on the 13th day which was a Friday, I watched Friday the Thirteenth (no, not the slasher pic from 1980). So today, I just saw Saturday the 14th. I remember previously seeing this on HBO back in the day and not thinking it funny at all. This time, I was amused by the first time Richard Benjamin's character was oblivious to a monster behind his back and the time his actual wife Paula Prentiss tried to bite him as a vampire. Other than those scenes, I still found the whole thing lame. Oh, and the only remotely scary scene was when those bats were attacking Ms. Prentiss. While watching, when a character named Van Helsing was introduced, I suddenly remembered that Benjamin had played a character with that name in the much better horror spoof, Love at First Bite, which he made a couple of years before. Part of me was wishing I was watching that again as lame scene after lame scene kept coming on in this boring and confusing movie. So not only were the leads wasted but also great character actor Jeffrey Tambor as the vampire. Good thing teen Kari Michaelsen had "Gimme a Break" to return to after finishing this. So on that note, I can't recommend Saturday the 14th.

Soon all ded...just like your sense of humour

[Corpsegoddess · 10/10 · 26 January 2006]

Wow, did we lose our sense of irony? This movie is SUPPOSED to be bad! And it knows it! It winks at itself through the entire film.

It's a ludicrous, silly, absurd and wonderful movie. It pokes fun at the often-ridiculous hallmarks of "traditional" horror films with a great sense of hyperbole.

The acting is brilliant in its awfulness ("Look at all these OWLS!"), the special effects are laughable (except for that severed head...there's something about it that's always creeped me out), and it's also a nice little commentary on "normal" families and how well they often DON'T know each other at all.

This is a really, REALLY bad movie---but in the really, REALLY best way.

Not hilarious, but kind of fun.

[LebowskiT1000 · 6/10 · 27 August 2002]

I wouldn't say this movie was hilarious, in fact I didn't laugh very hard at all throughout this film, although there are some good jokes here and there. A lot of the jokes were either really corny or just aren't very funny to me. I wouldn't say that is a bad thing, I just think that's a sign of the times. I think it's safe to say that comedy of the early 1980's is a great deal different than comedy of the 2000's, at least for this type of movie. There are a few movies that are just as old, if not older, that are still outright hilarious, so this isn't true in all cases.

I can't really say much about the cast, because the only person I recognized in the film was Jeffrey Tambor (Waldemar). Although, I did think that Kari Michaelson (Debbie) was quite the looker in this film. As far as acting goes, both Jeffrey Tambor and Kari Michaelson did just fine in their roles, as well as a few of the other cast members. But, I must admit that some of the acting was just TERRIBLE! It literally sounded like he/she was reading the words off a queue card or something.

This film is by no means a great film, but if you're a fan of horror/comedy film, then you should probably check this out. If you not really a big fan of horror/comedy films, then you might want to spend your money elsewhere. In any case, if you do end up seeing the film, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading,

-Chris

This movie should not have been produced.

[uber_marine · 1/10 · 8 December 2003]

I saw this movie and was not sure if I was supposed to laugh or to cry at the horrible acting in this film. This certainly was the worst film in history with the shoddy acting and the horrible lines it made laugh when they were trying to be serious. I would recommend this film if you want to be have a few good laughs otherwise the movie is garbage and should not have even went into production.